Books

My new favorite author

When Apple CEO Steve Jobs bashed Amazon's budding eBook thingy - the Kindle - he proclaimed that "people don't read anymore" followed by neat-and-tidy PR-prepared grounding for his claim.  Could this one claim convince and disillusion me?  However good (or evil) a CEO Steve Jobs is, could he be right and unseat my long-held romantic notions of people striding into their late 20s seeking to rekindle (AHA! Amazon has been outpunned!) their love for literacy?

I guess it is appropriate that I introduced this post with the Kindle; a sad, monochromatic, half-loved apparent bestseller; which disappoints all geeks with its features as well as larger concept.  It could be the end of reading altogether, it could save literacy, or it could mysteriously be out of stock forever.  The fact that the future of books and reading could depend on this tan, 60s tech looking paperweight is not underwhelming.  I personally grew up on books and even then in the middle of the 90s, I felt like I was in a slim majority.  By now, electronic media proliferation has all but delivered the deathblow to the book.  Why read when you can Digg, Youtube, Sparknote, Porn, and Stumble your way through the night?  I think some quick estimating will point out that the number of people reading in the US (minus Oprah book club culties and discouraged high school students) is probably small.  But, reading is cool, damnit; and mighty useful too.  It helps your personal voice, spelling, grammar (although clearly not your use of semicolons), cultural awareness, and provides an escapist pastime that won't fry your nerves, optical and otherwise.  Best of all, reading makes you look smart and hopefully not pretentious (although if you go about reading in the name of looking smart you're a lost case anyway).  

On a more metaphysical level, books as a form of communication date back to ancient times and offer the only true window into the past.  We can't go forward into the future only relying on the primary source mediums made more convenient and attractive only as far back as one century.  Where documented film does not go (essentially before 1920), wonderful Hollywood takes us and brings along creative freedom, revisionist liberality, and some downright deceptions.  It may be overblown, but my fear is the children of the next century will hold veritable sentiments about non-truths like the presence of Civil War officers in Japan fighting alongside samurai or The Last King of Scotland or every Mel Gibson film in the last 10 years.  And when Mel Gibson controls the opinions and ideas of the majority- we are truly fucked.